T George Harris, visionary journalist

He was an award-winning reporter who covered the civil rights movement, a senior editor at Look magazine during its boom years and a visionary who transformed a fledgling Psychology Today into a popular periodical with skyrocketing circulation.

But it is the footnote in T George Harris’ career that may be his most lasting legacy: during the campaign for the 1968 presidential election, Mr. Harris persuaded Michigan Gov. George Romney to release his personal tax returns — unheard of at the time but setting a standard that is commonplace today.

“I had the opportunity, so I asked,” Mr. Harris told Buzzfeed in an interview published in August 2012. “Romney was uniquely open and responsive, and I was doing an autobiography on him... It seemed like a good opportunity.”

Mr. Harris, a longtime San Diego resident, died of a heart attack Oct. 23 at his La Jolla home. He was 89.

“His career was so diverse,” said Carol Tavris, who worked for Mr. Harris at Psychology Today. “He had worked everywhere in journalism.”

Mr. Harris was born Oct. 4, 1924, in Franklin, Ky., just north of the Tennessee border. His passion for journalism began as an editor of his school newspaper, and his first job in the trade came when he graduated high school at 15 and went to work as a printer’s apprentice earning $12 per week at the Clarkesville (Tenn.) Leaf Chronicle in 1942. He volunteered for Army two years later, became an artillery spotter during World War II, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and earned the Bronze Star and Air Medal.

After the war, Mr. Harris attended the University of Kentucky, but he soon transferred to Yale, from which he graduated in 1949.

He was hired as a Time correspondent and became Chicago bureau chief in 1955, contributing editor in 1958 and San Francisco bureau chief in 1960. His reporting on race riots and protests earned him numerous awards during the civil rights movement. A Boston Globe story noted he frequently said that he had “been in more race riots than any American reporter.”

In 1962, Mr. Harris was named senior editor at Look, a general interest magazine with a circulation that peaked at nearly 8 million in 1969.

It was while he was at Look magazine that Mr. Harris made history. George Romney, a former American Motors Corp. president and the father of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was seeking the White House. Mr. Harris was in the midst of researching the elder Romney for a biography, “Romney’s Way: A Plan and an Idea,” when he asked the candidate to release his most recent tax returns. Romney refused, arguing that one year of tax returns could be misleading.

“Stumped by his argument,” Mr. Harris wrote, “I was not prepared for the move that it eventually led him to make: He ordered up all the Form 1040s that he and Mrs. Romney had filed over the past 12 years — including those profitable ones when he saved the American Motors Corp. from bankruptcy and became a millionaire on the company’s stock options.”

To no one’s surprise, the returns showed that George and Lenore Romney were millionaires, but they also showed the couple contributed 23 percent of their income to charity.

“The fact that he coaxed it out of him was a tribute to George’s style,” said longtime friend Daniel Yankelovich. “He was just a superb reporter, writer and editor. A remarkable, well-loved man.”

In 1969, Mr. Harris took over Psychology Today, turning the stodgy Del Mar-based publication into a lifestyle magazine of the 1970s with a circulation of 1.1 million.

“It was the Camelot of jobs,” said Tavris, who landed a post at the magazine a year before Harris arrived thanks to his recommendation. “He welcomed and encourage argument and debate and disagreement. At the time, I did not realize how rare that was from an employer.”

Mr. Harris was fired from the magazine after it was sold several years later, his freewheeling style incompatible with new ownership. But Mr. Harris would later help launch American Health, one of the fastest growing magazines of the 1980s.

Mr. Harris is survived by his third wife, Jeannie Harris of La Jolla; sons Amos Harris of St. Louis, Mo., Crane Harris of San Diego, and Gardiner Harris of New Delhi, India; a daughter, Ann Harris of Marlton, N.J.; and six grandchildren. Mr. Harris’s first wife, Sheila Harris, died in 1977.

A memorial service is planned for Nov. 10 at the UC San Diego Faculty Club, though arrangements are pending. The family asks that donations be made to the Southern Poverty Law Center.